The Origin of Freemasonry and Knights Templar ... - Lodge Prudentia

FREEMASONRY AND KNIGHTS TEMPLAREngland, with Captain Charles Warren in charge,to corroboratehave made many discoveries that gothe testimony of Josephus and of Scriptural writersof the earlier history of the Holy City.The present city of Jerusalem stands, as it were,upon a heap of dust and rubbish, under which is theJerusalem of the Bible. The fact that ancient Jerusalemwas seventeen times captured, and more thanonce leveled to the ground, its splendid edifices convertedinto piles of dust and ruins, is not sufficientaltogether to account for this singular situation,but it is rather to the fact that the stone of which thehouses and walks of Jerusalem are built is veryfriable and exfoliates rapidly, so rapidly that a fewcenturies are sufficient to reduce a square block toa shapeless mass. This, of course, produces pulverizedearth, the earth which has buried fifty, seventyfiveand even a hundred feet deep, the Jerusalemof our Saviour's period. The so-called "Jerusalemmarble," taken from the immense quarry which underliesso much of the northeastern quarter of thecity, and which has been excavated during the lastthree thousand years expressly for building materials,is so soft when it first comes from the quarrythat it may almost be crushed between the fingers.It is but little firmer than a well-crystallizedloafof sugar. True, it hardens upon exposure, and intime becomes a fair material for building purposes ;but ifany one issurprised to find the city of Jerusalemstanding upon a pile of disintegrated limestone,fifty feet thick, as itsurely does, he has only toexplore that enormous quarry, a quarter of a miledeep, to discover where the rubbish originally camefrom.44